Douglas Adams liked the sound that deadlines made as they whooshed by. Writers wanting to address burning contemporary and near future issues now live with a sonic boom permanently in their ears as what used to be the future hurtles into the past. Into this deafening chaos Tricia Sullivan, the author of Lethe, Dreaming in Smoke and Someone to Watch Over Me, returns to science fiction not a second too soon.

Maul deals with plagues: biological plagues, political ideology, sex and shopping. Its title is a New Jerseyism (Sullivan is from New Jersey, although she now lives in Britain): the word "mall", pronounced with a drawn-out nasal mangling. Both versions of the word are used freely throughout the two parallel realities in which the story takes place.

As the book begins, two middle-class teenage girls are obsessing over the latest fads in designer gear, what make-up to wear, and how to survive a turf war with a rival gang. These are no mean street kids, desperate for cash in an urban ghetto, but wealthy, switched-on and tuned-in young ladies. They are headed for the "Maul" and it's there, in the self-perfecting circle of hell which is the cosmetics section of Lord and Taylor, that they are drawn into a savage mortal gunfight.

"This maul is a roach motel for humans, it sucks us in and spits us out with pitiless regularity, and we like it. Visible poison in the form of tidy stacks of clothing, the roles we are meant to fit ourselves into. The lives we live that will never measure up to the commercials."

Later Sullivan reveals that this world, the book's "reality", is a virtual simulation being run inside a human being from some alternative reality. The unfortunate man - the ultra-Y-chromosome, almost-autistic Meniscus - is actually a farm for the development of biological weapons. The Mall is his retreat: an inner TV that absorbs him so deeply he becomes impervious to his own suffering. It's literally soap opera as anaesthetic. Only later, when the terrorbugs in Meniscus integrate with the Mall system, does he realise that what happens to the girls in the Mall will determine whether or not he dies or lives to bring a new kind of future to humanity.

It's not just the title that plays with words and their meanings. Maul's protagonist and heroine, Sun Katz, draws some of her inspiration from Sun Tzu, writer of the ancient Chinese manual The Art of War. Her philosophies veer wildly from the banal to the astonishing, with all the extremism of adolescence.

Meniscus is fortunate in one respect: not being dead. Most male humans have been wiped out by a chromosome-specific virus, a Y-plague, and the world is run by women. Perfect territory for some post-feminist criticism? You bet it is. While Sun and Suk Hee try to survive a lethal dispute over an eyeshadow, Dr Madeline Baldino, the scientist in charge of Meniscus, is plotting to get herself pregnant by a real man. She already has a clone daughter called Bonus - another name that speaks volumes about the relationship - but it's real children that count in this future, and for them you need money, or power, or both.

The women who run this world are most definitely not the utopian feministas of earlier decades of SF. They have a very present-day administrative verve, and pursue the ancient female preoccupations of shopping and chocolate as they struggle with careers and children. The surviving men, meanwhile, have assented to be locked up safely in castles from where they are periodically paraded for sales purposes, like a neverending series of Fame Academy .

The story hangs on the fact that there are natural survivors of the Y-plagues. These are aided on the inside by a political movement called Bicyclefish - you remember: "A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle" - and Dr Baldino's match in this story is much less disappointing than most heroes on offer.

All the elements of this novel work very hard all the time, carrying not only a complex plot and fascinating ideas about microbiology, but a heavy satirical charge aimed at contemporary culture and also at SF itself. That it manages so well and is so entertaining is testament to Sullivan's skill and intelligence. I haven't enjoyed a book so much in a long time.